


the one where Hanzo and McCree go on a road-trip

by bellepeppertronix



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-07 21:51:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7731070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellepeppertronix/pseuds/bellepeppertronix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Wait, wait, wait, DRIVING?” Hana cut in, her nose wrinkled. “Why waste that much time? Is the city really so small there’s no airport nearby?”<br/>“It isn’t that the city is small,” Mercy said. “We are trying to keep a low profile, and sneaking through airline security checks is not a good way to do that.”<br/>“Well, why not use the hypertrain?” Lucio suggested. </p>
<p>“’Cause recently, those’ve been gettin’ hit left’n’right by bandits,” McCree said. “Be awful hard to keep somethin’ this sensitive safe with the chance of petty crooks an’ organized gangs alike comin’ through an’ shakin’ everyone down for their valuables.”<br/>Winston nodded, after McCree finished. “Exactly.”<br/>Hana sat back in her chair, still frowning skeptically. </p>
<p>“Well, it’s a volunteer mission, right?” McCree said, amused. “Guess I’m the only volunteer we got.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Hanzo realized he was a fool for thinking any of this would be easy.  
Although his initial joining of Overwatch had gone smoothly, and he was officially a registered member--although technically classified as an ‘affiliated freelancer’ rather than an active agent, which according to the scientist gorilla meant he could come and go as he pleased while still retaining Overwatch permissions--he was still awkward around the team and the people who were to be his new teammates.

None of this was alleviated in the slightest by the fact that one of the men on the team was literally a walking, talking cowboy dream, straight from the old westerns he used to illegally download and watch at night on his phone, before guiltily deleting them the next morning.

Americans were supposedly the worst grade of foreigners--loud, boorish people with no manners who stomped around and couldn’t keep their hands to themselves. At best, they were humorous public laughingstocks, and at worst, swaggering arrogant windbags, best dealt with hastily and then gotten rid of with equal haste.

(This ‘knowledge’ doesn’t do anything to dampen Hanzo’s secret, obsessively-hidden fondness for ‘westerns’, nor does it in any way lessen his curiousity about the fabled ‘wild west’. All of which was spawned by an accidental click on a link that took him to The Magnificent Seven instead of the movie he’d been searching for. Five minutes in by the time he realized he was watching a remake of Seven Samurai, but he didn’t care--he was tired and sore from training and knew he wouldn’t have enough time to download and watch anything else before he had to sleep.)

So of course he had to fight the urge to scoff--who wore spurs and chaps but had no horse? Which would probably betray him entirely, as he had rather eagerly hoped the man _did_ have a horse...perhaps a nice red and white painted one...or else a beautiful silvery-gray one with a black mane and legs, and white patterning that looked like shibori all across its back...  
McCree didn’t even _have_ a horse. 

Having had one aspect of his ‘meet a cowboy’ fantasy partially dampened, he resolved to keep his mouth closed about the rest, until he saw the man in a fight and was again floored--the spurs might have been for show, but the six-shooter was _DEFINITELY_ real.

~

Hanzo knew himself well enough to know that he was terrible at small-talk. So while he was desperately hoping the American would do what Americans supposedly did, which was butt in, talk too much, and be overly familiar far, far too quickly, this didn’t happen.  
McCree was taciturn and laid-back, content to say no more than ‘Hello’ whenever he saw Hanzo, though his smiles all seemed genuine.  
Hanzo was left without a fallback for how to get to _KNOW_ the man. 

Not to say that getting to know any of the others was simple. There was the proverbial elephant in the room, which was that everyone--every last person--had to have known what he tried to do to his brother.  
What he _did_ to his brother.

Who seemed to have no enmity left for him; who invited him on walks around the compound, who introduced him to everyone else not as his would-be murderer but as his older brother, who invited him to meals he himself could not eat. 

The guilt and shame had Hanzo tied up in knots. He could not, however, say no to Genji--not anymore. He went with him meekly wherever he asked, was polite to his friends, and resolutely did _not_ stare at The Cowboy, with whom Genji seemed on particularly good terms. 

~

“Why don’t you just talk to him?” Genji asked, one afternoon.  
They were sitting in the rafters overlooking their storehouse; below them, pallets and pallets of orange crates were arranged in a neat grid. A small security drone shaped like a little blue jellyfish was hovering around the perimeter, making soft, sad-sounding booping noises to itself in five-minute intervals.  
“What?” Hanzo said. “Talk to who?”

It was already an odd feeling, talking to your brother who you tried to kill, who he had already mourned, who he had buried in his heart ten years ago. To hear his voice, the amused tones sliding in his direction, to feel his presence next to him and know that, again, he could turn to him and mention some obscure joke from their shared childhood and be instantly understood, was a blessing he did not believe he deserved.  
Genji, of course, thought otherwise. 

In no small, humble way, Hanzo looked up to him for that. Privately--moreso now--he sometimes thought that Genji ought to have been the older of the two. Then, he knew, the terrible thing he had done would not have come to pass, and Genji would be whole, and their relationship never would have been broken in the first place. Had Genji been in his place, Hanzo knew, without even a shadow of a doubt, that he would not have done what Hanzo did.

He felt both ashamed of himself and almost pathetically grateful that Genji survived, that he forgave him.  
“...and you are thinking too hard again, Hanzo. I can see it in your face.” 

Hanzo shifted slightly, looking away. He grumbled, “I always have to think hard, because I am always worried I will say something I will regret later.”  
“If you are worried they judge you for our past, then they would have to lay the same judgement on me. We are brothers from the same family, after all,” Genji said. 

After a long, long moment, Hanzo murmured, “You know that is not the whole issue. I feel...guilty for even having the privilege of talking to _you_.”  
Genji surprised him with a quiet, gentle laugh. “Brother, are you saying you feel like you don’t deserve to talk to my friends?”  
Hanzo huffed in embarrassment. “And if I am?”  
“No one is an island, brother. We are not meant to live that way. And…if you would talk to them,” Genji said, “Then they would become your friends as well, not just mine. You should try it.”

Genji stood, then, and clapped Hanzo on the shoulder. He hopped from one rafter to the next, as casually as hopping over a puddle, despite there being a good five six between the two of them. 

Hanzo looked after him, bewildered. “Where are you going?”  
“It’s almost six o’clock! That’s when they start play all the good shows on TV. And the big one in the main recreation room is first-come-first-serve, so unless you want to be stuck watching Song-kun making strangers rage-quit their games over the internet all night, we have to get there quickly.”  
Hanzo nodded and followed Genji’s lead.  
Video game Let’s-Plays were one thing; watching one made, live, was another ordeal altogether. Especially with someone as talented, but vicious, as Hana. 

~

“These hard-drives must be delivered in person to the safehouse,” Winston said, adjusting his glasses and frowning down at his tablet. He tapped it and the image on the hard-light map in front of them swiveled around and enlarged, showing them a holo-picture of the building in question: a plain, unassuming-looking office building. “All of us going would be a waste, as well as dangerous. I’m fairly certain this safehouse has not been compromised, which is precisely why I think we ought to reinforce it.”

“The place was already outdated when _we_ were still using it,” Morrison said, from where he was standing off to the side, his arms crossed. “About time you sent over some new tech.”

Winston coughed a little. “Yes, well. No one saw the need to upgrade the various infrastructures at an out-of-the-way, little-used safehouse, but since we’ve been tracking movements of some groups that are active relatively near there, it would be best if we had it place ready, in case we need it.”  
Everyone made understanding noises.  
“So who’s takin’ ‘em?” Lucio asked. He was sitting as still as he could manage, jogging one leg lightly.  
“I think that’s a job for someone very familiar with the area, who would have the easiest time blending in.” Winston said.

Everyone looked around at the motley group currently assembled around the table: Winston, Morrison, Angela, McCree, Genji and Zenyatta, Hanzo, Lena, Lucio, Hana, Reinhardt, barely fitting into one of the steel-framed chairs and hunched slightly just so he could actually use the arm-rests. Zarya had had to return to Russia when there was an emergency, and Mei was currently in Canada giving talks on glacial calving and the importance of maintaining high standards against emissions. 

“Well, it’s good to see everyone so eager to complete a mission!” Winston said, smiling.  
“Come on, everyone, it’s just a little drive to a different state. Nothing overly stressful, if you take back-roads and be careful.”

“Wait, wait, wait, _driving_?” Hana cut in, her nose wrinkled. “Why waste that much time? Is the city really so small there’s no airport nearby?”  
“It isn’t that the city is small,” Mercy said. “We are trying to keep a low profile, and sneaking through airline security checks is not a good way to do that.”  
“Well, why not use the hypertrain?” Lucio suggested. 

“’Cause recently, those’ve been gettin’ hit left’n’right by bandits,” McCree said. “Be awful hard to keep somethin’ this sensitive safe with the chance of petty crooks an’ organized gangs alike comin’ through an’ shakin’ everyone down for their valuables.”  
Winston nodded, after McCree finished. “Exactly.”  
Hana sat back in her chair, still frowning skeptically. 

“Aw, heck, Winston, I’ll go,” McCree said, holding up one hand.  
Hanzo was amused to see a palpable wave of relief go through the entire room.  
“Thank you for volunteering, Jesse, but this is not a single-person mission,” Angela said.  
McCree looked confused for a moment. “’Scuse me? Why not? Just a little drive, like Winston said.”

“Driving across the country with a case full of highly-advanced computer technology is not something one person should do alone,” she said, more firmly. “Driving _anywhere_ that requires you to travel over the course of multiple days is not a single-person task.”

McCree shrugged and scratched one of his elbows. “I done it before. Ain’t that big of a deal.”  
Winston shook his head. “I agree with Angela. There are too many variables for what could go wrong. You need at least one other person, just for safety’s sake alone.”  
The tension in the room went back up, and suddenly everyone found their toes, the walls, or the air in front of their noses very, very interesting, all in an effort _not_ to attract Winston or Angela’s attention. 

“Well, it’s a volunteer mission, right?” McCree said, amused. “Guess I’m the only volunteer we got.”  
Angela sighed and shook her head, but Winston just gave him a resigned look and handed him a thumb drive. “Please upload these files onto your personal phone. They’re important location notes and directions for how to install the updates once you get there. I’ll have Athena’s drives ready in the travel case by tomorrow morning. Be ready to leave no later than 08:00. And be _careful_ out there, Jesse.” 

After they’d all separated and were leaving the main room to go their own ways, Genji caught up with Hanzo in the hallway outside.  
“You should go with him,” Genji said.  
“What? Why? You and I have both seen him fight. He is more than capable enough to take a box--”  
“Brother, you know what I mean,” Genji said.

“That is not a good idea,”Hanzo said. “Besides, it’s a two-week-long mission. I do not think he would enjoy the idea of being trapped with a stranger for that long. Perhaps Lucio will offer to go with him, or Hana. Or Reinhardt.”

“Lucio would probably implode if he had to sit still for that many hours at a stretch. You and I both know Hana would rather eat her own hair than go for any extended period of time without an internet connection. And I honestly do not think Reinhardt will even be able to fit into the car Winston is providing.”

Hanzo made a peevish noise, crossing his arms over his chest. For a moment he refused to look at Genji.  
Genji crossed his arms over his chest and inclined his head at him, mirroring his gesture exactly.  
Hanzo shifted his feet.  
Genji copied him again. 

Hanzo sighed and rolled his eyes, failing to stop the grin from spreading across his face.  
“All right, all right! I will go talk to him, just...stop.”  
Genji laughed. “Who would have thought a silly game from when we were children would be my most effective argument strategy as an adult?”

~

“What was that?” McCree asked, leaning in a bit closer.  
They stood in the doorway of McCree’s room, with McCree leaned against the jamb, the door open just enough for him to lean out.

Hanzo tried not to balk at this intrusion into his personal space--partially because he didn’t want to offend the other man and partially because he didn’t want to speak any louder, preferring not to broadcast his business to everyone in the base.

“I said,” Hanzo began again, “That I would like to accompany you on your mission to the safehouse.”

At that, McCree’s face opened up into a real smile.  
“Well, come on in!” he said, pushing the door open enough for Hanzo to pass.  
“Wanted ta see some of America, didja?” McCree asked. “Don’t worry, you won’t be disappointed. The road we’re takin’ is famous. Have you ever heard of Route 66?”

Hanzo shook his head, frowning in thought, but the words didn’t conjure any particular image in his mind. He looked around the room with curiosity only thinly-veiled. He didn’t really know what he was expecting, but he was only slightly let down; the man didn’t have a rack for horse tack, of course, or a lasso hung up on the wall, or even pictures of cowboys...or...anything, really, but a bunch of snapshots of seemingly random places: an odd spiky tree on a tawny ground, with pale-blue mountains rising in the background; three black trees in a wasteland of white sand; an old sign shaped like a crooked arrow, seemingly pointing down at a red car parked in an otherwise vacant parking lot. There was a large, sun-faded poster clearly advertising some place called Deadlock Gorge, a huge Route 66 road sign in one corner of the picture and strange rock formations behind it. 

There were a handful of old books on the built-in shelf at the foot of the bed, but their spines were so worn he couldn’t read the titles; on the floor he had a woven rug with a geometric print of triangles and diamonds, worked in red and black and tawny beige, and a red and black plaid flannel comforter spread on the bed. On the desk under the window in the corner there were stacks of boxes of bullets, along with a few strays scattered across the desktop and one lonely cigarillo stubbed in an ashtray shaped like a cowboy hat.

McCree smiled and chuckled a little--this made crows-feet crinkle at the corners of his eyes--and Hanzo half-wanted to smile back without knowing why.  
“Well, don’t you worry. It’s one helluva trip!”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> McCree plays tour-guide and Hanzo pets a dog

Those words had rung in Hanzo’s mind for the first few hours of said trip, during which McCree inflicted some country music on him, some of which was actually pleasant, though the majority left him wondering why on earth anyone would want to write so many songs about tractors and having dirty boots to stash under someone’s else’s bed. 

McCree had hummed along to a few of them, tapping the steering wheel in time; Hanzo had read a book on his tablet, pausing occasionally to glance up at their surroundings as they passed them.

But about three hours in, after driving through an interminable flat expanse of grassy meadows bare except for the odd cluster of trees, he finally had to look over at McCree, an equally flat expression on his face.  
“Somethin’ up, pardner?” he asked.  
“What is so special about this ‘Route 66’? So far we have seen nothing more remarkable than old broken-down farmhouses and empty fields.”  
McCree had chuckled, at that. “Don’t you worry. We’ll run across some sights real soon, just you wait. You’ll wish you had a camera.”  
“I have my cell phone; the camera’s resolution is more than enough for anything we should come across.”  
“It’s just an expression, Shimada, don’t worry about it,” McCree said.

~

Hanzo woke, he didn’t know how long later, to the distinct sensation of sweat running from his armpits, down his sides.  
He didn’t even recall falling asleep; he’d never spent so long in a car in his _life_.  
His tablet had fallen between the seat and the door, and the side of his neck was stiff from the way he’d been leaning against the window.

McCree was still driving, the radio now turned off; when Hanzo shot him a meaningful look and then looked at the radio, McCree shrugged one shoulder and flicked it back on.  
They got nothing but silence and the vague, glimmery hint of a song broadcast from some station as far away as a dream.  
Hanzo stared at the radio.  
“Where _are_ we?”

McCree tapped the car’s ancient GPS screen, hummed, and said, “Oh, ‘bout an hour outside’a Branton.”  
Hanzo shifted in his seat, wincing--his thighs and hips were painfully numb--before muttering, “Where is this state, ‘Branton’, near to? How many states _are_ there in this country?”

McCree laughed. “Oh, naw, see, Branton ain’t a state, it’s a city.” He paused and scratched his chin. “Well, a town. You’ll see. We can stop there, charge the rust-bucket up, grab some grub, and get some rest.”

~

The road climbed into impressive sandstone hills, with boulders like the knucklebones of dead giants scattered everywhere. Here and there, low scrubby grass grew, baked tawny-yellow and dry by the sun.

The road they were driving on was carved into the side of the increasingly steep hills--a thin strip of asphalt with huge tawny-pink rocks looming to the left, and a narrow, deep-cut canyon to their right. On the other side of the canyon there were other, lower hills, their sides ridged with diagonal slashes of sediment layers, the pinkish stone altering strips of red-pink with eggshell white.

“That down there’s the railroad grade,” McCree said, gesturing with a jerk of his head.  
They went around another curve and when Hanzo looked down into the bottom of the canyon he saw what McCree said was true--there _were_ train tracks there.  
“Why would anyone put train tracks so close to an area that must be prone to landslides?” Hanzo asked.

McCree shrugged. “I dunno. I ain’t a railroad planner. I reckon it was most convenient at the time when they built it.”  
Hanzo shook his head. “There is nothing in this country that makes sense. You carve roads into unstable hills and build railroads beneath cliff faces. Then you drive on them and call it a...’scenic route’. I see no point in this.” He knew he was being peevish but couldn’t contain himself; surely the man didn’t expect him to be impressed by views of rocky cliffs that they were speeding past?

“Now that ain’t fair,” McCree said. “Howzabout you take another look over there and tell me if you think it doesn’t make sense to call this a scenic route.”  
Hanzo started to complain, but as he did, McCree took them around another turn--this time between two high walls of paler pink stone--and when they emerged, he just kept his mouth open, but couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

The land fell away beneath them, sharp canyons giving way to a wide, flat valley, broken only occasionally by middling, rocky hills. In the morning sun he could see the train tracks stretching off into the distance, gleaming like threads of silver. The valley went on as far as he could see, open and wild. In the far distance there were mountains rising, washed out to pale purple and bluish-gray with distance. Overhead the sky was brilliant cyan, mottled with tall, fluffy clouds whose shadows dappled the valley’s green floor like decorations. 

“...And purple mountain majesties,” McCree said.  
“What?” Hanzo said. He hesitated before turning to face him; the view, as he’d said, WAS breathtaking.  
McCree chuckled. “Nothin’. Just a line from one of our national songs.”

Hanzo sad back a moment later when the road took them back into the granite hills.  
“Hm. The view was...unlike any I have ever seen,” Hanzo said.  
When he looked over at him, McCree’s face was split with a wide grin. “You like it? Well, buddy, you’d best hold on, ‘cause you ain’t seen _nothin’_ yet!”

(Hanzo was remembering how Genji had said to just _talk_ to the man, so he was making a serious effort. How well it was recieved was a mystery, since McCree still treated him the same way he always did--cordial enough but taciturn enough that it could just be common civility and nothing else. Hanzo resolved to try to be more outgoing--though he wasn’t quite sure how he shoul go about that.)

~

When they reached Branton, Hanzo figured it was good a time as any.  
Pulling off the dusty road and into the equally dusty parking lot of the rest stop, Hanzo could see that McCree had…exaggerated the size of the place.  
There appeared to be only the one paved road, the rest being little more than gravel paths. Here and there were low farmhouses with the paint flaking off their wooden walls, standing far back from the road in fields of green cornstalks. They passed a few empty paddocks, a red and white farmhouse with brown chickens running loose in the fenced-in yard. 

The charging station’s parking lot abutted directly onto the road without the nicety of a curb or sidewalk in between. The building itself was blue and pink, or possibly faded red, with aged neon lights running around where the eaves of the roof would be. Even before getting out fo the car he could see the rust streaks on everything, the rust-spotted chrome of the cars parked out front, one fascianating relic so old it had still old-fashioned rubber tires. Immediately above the building, positioned on the roof, there was a billboard that read, in stylized letters, “Get Your Gas Here! Get Your Kicks On Route 66!”

To one side of the charge station, sharing the same parking lot, there was a building with an unpainted, weathered wooden facade rather self-consciously constructed to resemble an old Western saloon. It had a wooden sign carved to resemble an old Western signs, the letters in a chunky block font that read Big Ray’s Saloon and Restaurant.  
Horses stood in the shade in front of the restaurant, tethered near a watering trough. Hanzo paused a moment to look. Horses, simply and casually tethered as if it was the most normal thing in the world to do something that seemed almost feudal to him. People still rode them places, as a primary means of transport, and the thougth struck him as both quaint and backwards and fascinating. 

One of the horses was a lustrous lacquer-black, with white socks, like it had dipped its feet in cream; the other was a wheat-blonde creature with hair like white silk floss; and the third was the color of polished teak. All had tooled leather saddles in the excessive western fashion, with decorated stirrups. 

There was also a tawny, fox-faced dog of indeterminate breed lying in the shade nearest the water trough; the dog was panting a little and the horses stood swishing their tails and twitching their ears in the afternoon heat.  
After a long moment the dog lifted its head and stood up, stretching. Hanzo could see it was not tied and had no collar.

“You wanna grab some grub before we recharge the rustbucket and head back out?” McCree said, coming around to stand beside him.  
Hanzo raised an eyebrow at him. “At that place? No. Thank you.”  
McCree chuckled a little. “You don’t even know what they serve there.”  
“I know it looks as though the place has not seen a health inspector in twenty years,” Hanzo said. “We should just recharge the car so we can be on our way.”

He shouldered past McCree, and had gone a full five paces before the worry that the other man was not following him set in. When he turned his head he almost started--McCree was right there beside him, scarcely one step behind.  
“What?”  
“You--I did not hear you,” Hanzo said.

McCree stuck out one boot and waggled it back and forth. “Took off my spurs. Kinda hard to drive with ‘em on, see.”  
After that, though, he noticed the other man’s footfalls, either because he was walking more noisily on purpose, or because he was just aware they sounded different. The realization gave him a strange feeling.

The tawny dog met them at the door of the gas station, sitting a little ways off to the side and looking at them expectantly, twitching the tip of its tail.  
Hanzo paused and looked at the dog.

The dog edged closer, keeping its head low and giving them a piteous, pleading look.  
Hanzo sighed and glanced around, before kneeling. The dog straightened immediately and trotted over to him, wagging its tail. For a moment he stroked the soft, dusty fur across its shoulders, sinking his fingers in and scratching gently. The dog sat down and panted contentedly, thumping its tail against the dusty ground. While it was distracted, he carefully felt its neck to see if it was wearing a chain or some other identifier. When he found nothing he felt a sinking feeling.  
“It has no collar,” he said.

“Poor fella,” McCree said. “Reckon I could buy some chicken tenders or somethin’ for the poor mutt.”  
“It is well-fed, however,” Hanzo said, stroking the dog’s sides as the dog panted and writhed in glee. “Perhaps its owner lives nearby and it wandered here on its own.”  
McCree agreed. “That’s usually the case with farm towns like this. Every dog is a yard dog. Still, I’ll get somethin’ for ‘em.” When Hanzo finally looked up at him, he could see McCree had an unexplainable expression on his face--amusement and something else.  
“I will go,” Hanzo said too quickly, and stood up.  
When he looked back through the glass doors, he could see McCree was bending to pet the dog, as well.

Inside was only slightly cooler than outside, due to the presence of a large metal fan on the back countertop, which was making an abominable rattling noise. He scowled around himself at the racks of cigarettes, the chewing gum displays, the several shelves apparently dedicated to nothing but varying kinds of chips. How could Americans, a people notorious for laziness and loving ‘quick and convenient’ things, consider _this_ to be a ‘convenience store’? There was only one place to get actual food--a sad little kiosk in the back, where steel racks held up unappetizing-looking hamburgers and hot dogs and fried chicken strips in folding cardboard boxes. His lip wrinkled. Who knows how long the things had even been sitting there, he thought, but he walked over and got a box that said ‘Chicken Strips’, popping the lid open to see what they looked like. 

Satisfied that he wouldn’t be feeding the poor neglected dog something that would break its teeth or immediately kill it, he went to the register with the box in hand.  
There was no one there. He looked for a bell to ring or a service button or something of the sort, but found nothing.

In the middle of his scanning the countertops for a button or a bell or _something_ that could possibly summon the absent cashier, he noticed the countertop was actually a screen recessed into the counter and covered with a pane of badly-scuffed glass; on the screen there was lottery ticket information, current gas prices, and, as the screen refreshed--bounties. 

There were posters of three unsavory looking men, two white men who were bald and sunburnt almost the color red of a cooked lobster, and the third being tanned the color of leather with wild blond hair. 

The fourth man was someone he would have recognized anywhere--wilder-looking, yes, with beard overgrown even more than usual, and chapped lips and the eyes of a man who has not slept in too long--but by then Hanzo knew his face well enough that seeing the name came as the biggest shock.

Jesse McCree, it said. Wanted for train hijacking, grand theft auto, resisting arrest, illegal possession of firearms…And the bounty was a huge number, with a tail of so many zeroes that they’d had to scale down the font. 

Suddenly the sweat between his shoulderblades was clammy-cold. He looked around, searching to find out where the security cameras were to destroy them and at least throw them off their trail for a bit, but ultimately he decided against it. 

He took the chicken container, ripped the magnetized barcode scanner off its bottom and stuck it to the underside of the countertop, and slipped the chicken box into his kyudo-gi, before taking a step towards the doors as if nothing was out of the ordinary.  
A second later a tall, rawboned young white man with terrbible acne came out of the back, carrying a box. “Oh. You wanna buy somethin’?”

When he got a better look at Hanzo’s face, he scowled slightly and mumbled something under his breath about tourists, before repeating his first question, much louder.  
Hanzo gritted his teeth in annoyance, but decided to use the insult to advantage.  
“Sumimasen, sumimasen,” he said, dipping his head once. He pointed at the map pinned to the wall behind the countertop. “…Inter…state?”  
“THE…HIGHWAY…IS…BACK…THAT…WAY!” the young man shouted, pointing in the direction they’d come. 

Hanzo nodded and tried to look grateful before nodding again and thanking him, turning on one heel and stepping back out into the sunlight, feeling like he’d been burned.  
McCree was sitting cross-legged on the raised pavement beside the door, laughing and playing wiht the dog.  
Hanzo felt a jolt of fear and nervousness so primal it made his stomach cramp.  
“We need to leave,” he said. 

McCree looked up at him, confused. “Come again, pardner?”  
“We need to leave now.”  
“What in the--why? We ain’t even--”  
“We need to _leave_ ,” Hanzo said again, hauling McCree up by the arm.  
He gave a last despairing look at the dog, who was prancing in circles near them, before reaching into his kyudo-gi and pulling out the chicken. He took out one strip and fed it to the dog, then took the rest, waggled the box in the dog’s face to get its attention, and then threw it as hard as he could, into the field behind the gas station. The dog raced after it.  
“Come on,” Hanzo said.

That time, McCree followed him, still looking bewildered, but he got into the car and pulled off when Hanzo told him to.  
The second they were back on the road, Hanzo exploded.

“Why was there a wanted poster in there with _YOUR NAME_ and picture on it?” he demanded.  
“Oh…I probably should’a mentioned that. I’m kind of a popular fella ‘round these parts, though, uh, not for the right reasons.”  
“YOU PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE MENTIONED THAT TO EVERYONE ELSE!” Hanzo bellowed. “If this mission goes awry, it could cost you your LIFE!”  
McCree scratched his jaw, clearly embarrassed, but said in a quiet voice, “Well, but don’t you s’pose you could say that about any of our missions?”  
“This is DIFFERENT!” Hanzo said.  
“How?”  
“BECAUSE! YOU--” Hanzo said, but he couldn’t think of anything else to add, just clenched his fists in a fury of helpless frustration, before siting back roughly in the car’s seat. He crossed his arms and steadfastly refused to look at McCree.

~

Night was falling by the time they pulled over, at Hanzo’s bequest, into a field overgrown with the tallest grass he’d ever seen. There was no fence; they just drove the car a ways off the road and parked it behind a gnarled, lightning-blighted tree, and McCree killed the lights and the engine.

The darkness was sudden and sage-colored with fading sunlight shining through the grass, which came up all the way to the car’s windows.  
Hanzo finally looked over at McCree. McCree looked back at Hanzo.  
For a long time neither of them said anything. Then McCree unclipped his seatbelt and stretched, sighing and groaning like a bear.  
“I, uh,” he said, after he’d readjusted his shirt, “I owe ya one for savin’ me back there.”  
Just as suddenly as Hanzo’s fury had come, the resentment abated, dying down to a nagging sense of annoyance. 

“It was…It was nothing remarkable. I merely read a news posting and relayed the information to you.”  
“No, no, really! I just about put my foot down into a bear-trap and you caught me. That was a mighty decent thing for you to do, and I thank ya for it.” McCree said, and fixed him with the most achingly sincere smile he’d seen in what felt like years. 

“You are welcome. There is no need to make so much out of it. I did nothing out of the ordinary,” Hanzo said brusquely. But warmth was blooming in his stomach and in his chest, and he found he couldn’t look McCree in the eye anymore without feeling a sense of embarrassed eagerness. 

“So, uh. D’you want to camp out in Maison Back-seat, or do you mind if I do?”  
Hanzo frowned at him thoughtfully before he understood the joke. He snorted a little. “The accommodations there ARE rather preferable to sleeping sitting up,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at the back seat, which held nothing but the black case with Athena’s drives in it. “However, I would not be so rude as to take them from you. You have driven all day.”  
“Ya sure? Well, thanks, pardner!” McCree said. 

When he opened the car door and climbed out, the warm summer-scent of grass and dirt wafted into the car, driven on a lazy breeze. Hanzo brushed the lock of hair off his forehead and wondered what he was doing before McCree closed the front door and opened the back door.  
“You want your stuff out of the trunk or anything?”

“No, thank you,” Hanzo said. He hadn’t packed a pillow, or anything that could be readily made into one; he hadn’t thought they’d be sleeping in the car.  
“You’ll wake up tomorrow with one helluva crick in your neck if you don’t use something, at least,” McCree said.  
“One of us should stay awake anyway, to keep watch,” Hanzo insisted. “We may have been followed.”

“That _does_ sound like a solid plan. We can take turns--howsabout you wake me up after I’ve had, say, three an’-a-half hours’ worth of shut-eye so you can get some?”  
“That would be wise, I think,” Hanzo agreed.  
“You’ll still want somethin’ to rest your head on later, though,” McCree said.  
Hanzo considered this. He was about to tell McCree about his pillow predicament when he heard a rustling sound and then felt the drape of fabric over one of his shoulders.

“Your cape--?” he said, taking the garment from McCree gently.  
“It’s a serape,” McCree said, his voice wry.  
“Where does this word come from? ‘Serape’?” Hanzo asked, after a long moment.  
He had pulled it into his lap and was carefully re-folding the material, before rolling it into a squat, thick log.

“Mexican Spanish, or, borrowed from the locals’ language. The, uh, locals down there used to wear ‘em a lot, and we never stopped wearin’ em up here, even after they took this part of the country from Mexico. Although nowadays you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who didn’t mistake ‘em for ponchos,” McCree said. He sounded amused.  
Hanzo was under the impression that a poncho was a cheap square of plastic with a hole in the middle and a hood attached, which unfashionable tourists bought at gift shops and wore to stay dry when it rained unexpectedly. He had the tact not to blurt this out.  
There was also the ‘we’ that McCree had thrown in. Was he not American? Hanzo had been fairly certain, he’d thought.

While he was musing on this, he could hear the soft sounds of McCree settling down to sleep: grumbling good-naturedly, swearing softly to himself, fumbling--he accidentally kicked the back of the driver’s seat and apologized, though Hanzo was sitting in the passenger’s seat--the soft twin thumps of his boots hitting the floor of the car. Finally he heaved a content-sounding sigh.  
Then quiet. 

Hanzo heard crickets, the night breeze rustling in the grass.  
He watched the stars begin to show in the indigo-black of the sky. The moon was a fat crescent sitting near the distant horizon, washing the grass around them silvery-green, the tree black and silver. 

He made a few lazy, abandoned efforts to read something on his tablet, before giving up in favor of just staring around at the scenery. It was not something he would admit, but he was enjoying the night, the stillness. Not a single car passed on the nearby road; there was nothing to disturb the peaceful illusion that they were an island half-sunk in the sleepy silver-green grass, with crickets singing around them.  
McCree, unlike he’d expected, did not snore. 

Exactly three and a half hours later, when Hanzo woke him up, McCree stretched and scrubbed at his face with his hands a little, and laughed sheepishly.  
“I was out like a log, there, wasn’t I?” he said.  
“You were very deeply asleep,” Hanzo said, wondering at Americans’ bizarre idioms. “But I cannot make any comments about ‘logs’, or draw any comparison between you and lumber.”  
McCree just laughed.

Later, Hanzo fell asleep with the other man’s rolled-up serape tucked between the side of his face and his shoulder, the worn, soft wool smelling of dust and pine and tobacco and faintly of sweat. He slept lightly, and dreamt of valleys with narrow rivers flashing silver-bright into the distance.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hanzo and McCree go for a walk in the desert. Hanzo steps in a hole. McCree gives a geography lesson.

The morning was cool and still.   
When Hanzo woke up, McCree was not in the car; he started awake and almost panicked before he heard whistling and the telltale splatter of liquid hitting dirt from waist height.  
When he looked out the car’s window, he could see McCree standing maybe ten meters away from the car, his back turned. 

Hanzo wrinkled his nose slightly, but understood. They _had_ been on the road for some time.   
He straightened, carefully pulling the rolled-up serape from where it had been wedged between his shoulder an face, and unrolling it slowly. The material had a soft, coarse weave with delicate soft slubs in the yarn; hand-woven, clearly. He wondered how old it was, where McCree had gotten it.   
When he looked up at him, McCree was still urinating like a horse, now whistling to himself a little.   
Very tactfully Hanzo opened the car’s door and stepped out of the other side. Before he had gone three steps, however, McCree’s voice, hoarse with drowsiness, greeted him.   
“Mornin’, pardner! Sleep okay?”

Hanzo half-turned, then recalled that the man was still probably standing there with his private parts in his hands.  
He didn’t turn around.

“It was…tolerable,” he said, over his shoulder. “It would have been made much more so, had I not been awakened in such a…manner.”  
“Ahh…yeah…sorry ‘bout that. Not much else to do about it; when you gotta go, you gotta go, after all.”

“Yes,” Hanzo said. “And if you had had the foresight to mention that you were still a wanted man, we might have made provisions so that neither of us had to relieve ourselves in a field like wild animals.” Hanzo paused for a long moment, and then added, “…Thank you for lending me your serape. I have folded it for you.”  
“You’re welcome. And come on, it ain’t so bad!” McCree said. “Kinda makes me feel like I’m campin’!”  
“’Camping’,” Hanzo said.  
“Y’know! You’n a bunch’a friends’n’family get together and go off into the great outdoors, pitch a tent or sleep under the stars, cook your food over an open fire, an’ enjoy nature for a little bit!”

Hanzo frowned as he parsed this, and then shook his head. “You cannot mean to tell me that people seriously still do that for fun.”  
McCree laughed. “Aww, no-o-o, no, you can’t act like that’s a weird American thing, I know you all got mountains and forests and whatnot over there, and I _know_ people go campin’ where you’re from!”  
“That does not mean that I have ever been, or ever wanted to go,” Hanzo pointed out.  
“Fair enough. But you don’t know what you’re missin’!”  
“If it is anything like this,” Hanzo said, “And involves relieving myself in the wilderness all the time, then I would very happily decline. Forever.”  
McCree laughed again.

“You know, you say that. Bet if you saw half the places I’ve been where I slept under the stars, you’d change your tune.” McCree said.

Hanzo didn’t even know how to respond to that; so he grumbled a bit, but ended up walking twelve or so paces away and relieving himself near the cracked, sun-bleached stump of a tree, wishing for a clear patch of dirt to at least kick over the area. Afterwards he stared down at his hands and sighed.  
“Do you have any--”

“Wipes’re in the glove compartment,” McCree said. He was already sitting in the car, leaning out the open driver’s door to offer the plastic box to Hanzo.  
He pinched one soapy-smelling wipe out and wrung his hands clean, frowning. 

A few moments later he sat down in the passenger’s seat--right in time for his stomach to announce his hunger in the loudest, most embarrassing manner possible.  
“You, too, huh? Kinda wish you’d taken more of that chicken back there…” McCree said. He sounded both weary and amused.

Hanzo pursed his lips and muttered, “I would not have had to _steal chicken_ from a roadside store like some common criminal in the _first place_ if _you_ had been more forthcoming about your situation.”

“What good would that’ve done, huh? Winston or Morrison would’a given both of us fake IDs--not like the ones we got _now_ ain’t fake--and cover names, which wouldn’t’a helped a lick if bounty hunters caught up with us, and would’a made things _worse_ if the law caught up with us.”

Hanzo growled in frustration but could not refute what McCree said. He was right.  
“Then you should not have agreed to come on this mission! Morrison should have been the one. Is he not also American?”  
“Morrison don’t want to admit it out loud, but he’s only one guy, an’ he’s on the wrong side of middle age. Plus, he ain’t from ‘round these parts and doesn’t know his way around as good as I do.”

“’As good as you do’,” Hanzo echoed, looking McCree up an down in annoyance. “You are a wanted man walking around in places where there are bounty advertisements with your name and face all over them. I do not see how an awareness of the local geography would be of any real use in this situation.”  
“Look, if we haveta go to ground and hide someplace out here--heaven forbid--” McCree hastily added, at Hanzo’s sharp glance-- “Then trust me, I’m the fella you wanna be with.”   
Hanzo grumbled more under his breath, and said nothing else for a long while.

They ended up eating some of the rations Winston had sent along with them, self-heating steak bowls that reactivated when a cord was pulled. The instant rice was almost mush and the rehydrated steak slightly rubbery, but it was served with a packet of a thick sauce that was a surprisingly passable version of teriyaki sauce. Hanzo decided not to complain. 

~

They drove for longer, after that. McCree plugged his phone into the radio and they listened to someone named Johnny Cash bawling about how he’d been everywhere, in a childish (but nevertheless entertaining) song that seemed to consist entirely of the names of different cities, strung together over a catchy guitar jingle. 

Something occurred to Hanzo, while he was listening to all the names, and after the song died off.   
“Is Dodge City a real place?” he asked, eyeing McCree and trying not to seem obvious.  
McCree, who had been rolling down his window, caught his hat when the wind snatched at it and carefully dropped it into the backseat.  
For a split second Hanzo was afraid he had not heard and would ask him to repeat himself--which Hanzo could not do, out of simple pride. But instead, McCree nodded once and said, “Aw, yeah! Sure is. Only been once, myself, and that was on a job so I didn’t get to see any of the sights. Why?”

Hanzo looked at him out of the corner of his eye, wondering if McCree would laugh and say something cruel if he just came out with the truth.  
McCree, though, only squinted at the GPS for a second before looking over at Hanzo.   
“I…heard the name somewhere,” Hanzo said. “On a list of the most lawless cities in the world.”

McCree chuckled a litte, smirking. “Usedta be, yeah! Hell, they were famous for the gunfights they usedta have out there. ‘Course, if you’re out in the middle of big nowhere the way they are, you gotta have some kind of entertainment, and I s’pose that’s a kind, after all.”

Hanzo remembered to snort in disdain, although a part of him sincerely wanted to press him for more information about these mythical gunfights. “Shoot-outs in public streets are entertaining?”  
“What? Naw! The tall tales about ‘em afterwards. Shoot, there ain’t a person who wouldn’t make up some long-winded yarn about this fella they saw this one time, ‘bout six-seven feet tall, had a six-gun and could bullseye a fly at ten yards. Was maybe Bass Reeves or Wyatt Earp, from the look of ‘im.” McCree scratched his chin. He had been grinning wider and wider as he spoke. “’Course, the issue of whether or not they actually SAW the fella kinda got lost in the scramble, a lotta times. And, hell. Can’t say I blame ‘em, not really. Someday all that’ll be left of all of us is stories, anyway.” 

Hanzo hesitated a moment, chewing on the last phrase the American said, aching to write it down.   
He had another question to ask, though. “And the phrase, ‘get the hell out of Dodge’.”  
“Well, if you heard that much about a place--gunfights in the streets, brawls in every bar, jailhouse overflowin’ with violent criminals--how long would _you_ wanna hang around there?” McCree said.   
Something about the way McCree spoke made Hanzo laugh--one sudden, startled sound, before he stopped himself and looked over in embarrassment and saw McCree still smiling a little.  
“Did you make that up?” Hanzo asked.

“What’s that, pardner?”  
“About Dodge City. Did you--?”  
“Nope, all true. Hell, I’m surprised you ain’t looked it up yourself, by now,” McCree said.  
Hanzo couldn’t say that doing so would have made him feel foolish. Instead he shrugged a little and settled back in the seat.  
“I had thought about that. But it seemed more…interesting to ask an American instead.”  
“Directly to the source,” McCree said. “I can see that.”  
They fell into a silence that felt amicable rather than awkward.

The land had flattened again into boring tawny terrain; McCree’s music took a turn for the slow and melancholy. Hanzo was listening to a woman crooning about walking under the moonlight and weeping willow trees while he tried (mostly pretended) to read something on his tablet. He could feel himself starting to drift off, and did not want a repeat of the earlier mildly-embarrassing encounter.

He shifted in the seat, harrumphed like a badger, and when that did not elicit a response from McCree, finally said in a gruff, quiet voice, “I am tired. Wake me if anything unexpected happens.”  
“Sure thing, Shimada,” McCree said.  
Hanzo did _not_ ask to borrow his serape to use as a pillow, but he thought about it--the soft-scratchy wool under his face, the warm-dusty pine smell.   
He put his elbow on the windowsill and propped his cheek on his knuckles and closed his eyes, wondering about how McCree wrapped the serape around himself.

When he woke again, it was to the distinct sensation of a car pulling off a raised road onto a lower section of dirt: the entire vehicle rocked diagonally on its tires, the weight settling unevenly, and Hanzo was wide awake with one hand clutching the door handle and his legs tensed to leap out of the door before the thing wrecked, because McCree must have fallen asleep at the wheel--

But when he looked over, he saw McCree still at the wheel, completely awake, but frowning down at the dashboard indicators and looking between them and the empty field they’d pulled into.

Hanzo said nothing, only watched the other man, who had a pinched, annoyed expression on his face for all of three seconds as he pulled the car off the road and carefully sidled it behind a cluster of bushes. The car came to a slow, lazy stop, and McCree turned off the engine and pulled the keys from the ignition with a soft grunt.  
“Why have you stopped?” Hanzo finally asked.  
“’Cause we hit Egypt. Battery’s dead.”  
“What do you mean, we ‘hit Egypt’? We are nowhere near Egypt, or anyplace else,” Hanzo said. 

McCree looked over at him and snickered softly, mostly in his nose, and shook his head.  
“It just means we’re on ‘Empty’. ‘E’, Empty, ‘E’, Egypt. Any way you slice it, we ain’t goin’ nowhere else in this. Not right now, anyway.”  
McCree yanked up the safety brake--Hanzo wanted to point out how useless that was, since the car was on level ground--and opened the car door, stepping out.  
Hanzo climbed out after him, stiff legs and numb feet protesting.

“NOW what?” Hanzo asked, looking down in disgust at their now-useless car.  
McCree, to his horror, went around to the car’s back door on his side and opened it. He took his duffel out of the back seat and shouldered it, briefly fanning himself with his hat.   
“We walk,” the American said.

Hanzo stood by the car, indignation sloshing around inside him like boiling water inside an undersized vessel.  
“WHAT?” he demanded. “What do you mean ‘WALK’? To WHERE? In this HEAT?”   
“Ain’t but one road,” McCree said. “And near as I can tell, if we follow it, we’re bound to end up somewhere. GPS said we were near to a rest-stop anyway.”

“Somewhere,” Hanzo said, tossing his head. “Oh, yes, ‘SOMEWHERE’! I have HEARD of your ‘Death Valley’ and the vultures that will pick over our sun-bloated corpses when we finally collapse and die of dehydration!”  
McCree only smirked a little and chuckled at that. “I don’t see that happenin’ at all. One, on account of Death Valley bein’ in California and us bein’ in the middle of Nevada, and two, on account of there bein’ no trees, cliffs, or other places for buzzards of any type to nest in. Now come on, we got someplace we have to get to.”

So they walked.   
And walked.  
And walked.   
Every now and then McCree tapped at his phone and hummed thoughtfully, but Hanzo had checked his own maps earlier and was well aware that there were no towns nearby. He wondered precisely what McCree meant when he’d said a ‘rest stop’; they had passed several and he had been appalled to find that those words were applied only to a single building of lavatories, and some clusters of dusty picnic tables under rusting metal awnings. The thought that the man wanted him to WALK to one of these places was not promising at all. 

The desert stretched around the road, flat and tawny-brown as far as the eye could see. Brown foothills rose off in the distance; the only things to see were low scrubby bushes and odd-looking plants that resembled spiky balls with single stalks bearing clusters of papery yellow-white blossoms.  
“Yucca plants,” McCree said, after some time. 

“They are...strangely pleasant to look at. The soft masses of flowers rising above the cluster of the sharp leaves.” Hanzo said, and then felt stupid when he realized how the words sounded.

“The locals use ‘em for everything,” McCree said. “Some of ‘em you can make into soap, some of ‘em you can eat, some of ‘em you can strip down and make into fiber for baskets and rope and all kinds of things.”  
“The ‘locals’?” Hanzo asked.  
McCree smiled a little. “The Native Americans.”

Hanzo didn’t even know where to _begin_ asking questions, so he fell silent, walking beside McCree and privately wishing he’d worn more comfortable shoes: the metal cleats on the bottom of his boots meant that the heat from the asphalt was going directly to the soles of his feet.

He shot a glance at McCree, who was comfortably slouching along in his cowboy boots.   
Hanzo maintained his silence for a while longer, the heat making him more and more irritable. His kyudo-gi was stuck to his back and neck with sweat, and he could feel the skin of his forehead and across his cheeks and his neck and the exposed dip of his chest beginning to burn and tighten with impending sunburn. 

He hadn’t thought he’d be walking out like this, or else he’d have brought some sunscreen; as it was, the trip was going places he hadn’t expected.  
He felt miserable, partly resenting Genji for suggesting this, and partly feeling terrible for feeling that way about his brother, whose consideration he did not even deserve, who had proposed this as a way for him to--

\--To what, exactly? To make friends with McCree? To have time alone with him to ‘get to know him better’? Both of those ideas were beginning to seem completely ludicrous, at that point. He began to wonder what the point of this excursion had even been. This certainly was not a mission that he had any particularly valuable skill-set to offer.

There was also another issue.  
He honestly was not dressed for the climate. He had been expecting an air-conditioned car, regular stops at civilized places that had paved parking lots and did _not_ have massive potholes or were paved in pea-gravel or dirt.  
The entire time he’d been walking, his feet had been hurting more and more, though he was too stubborn to admit it; but now the pain was at the point where it felt like the soles of his feet were being scalded, every step like he was walking on hot iron.

He stopped for a moment, his face pinched, and then stepped off the road into the sand, which offered only minimal relief.  
McCree stopped immediately, turning to face him.  
“You all right, there, Shimada?”

“...I am fine. This road has not been re-paved in so long there are loose pieces everywhere. I am beginning to fear for my boots,” he lied.  
“Well, shoot, the next time we find a good shoemaker, why don’t you pick up some new duds? I know a fella who does good work,” McCree said, and stuck out one of his own boots, waggling the toe back and forth.  
Hanzo surprised himself by snorting a little--and then laughing.

“...Why do you wear those boots, and sometimes even spurs, if you have no horse?”  
McCree seemed genuinely surprised by the question; he blinked at Hanzo. “Well,” he said at last, “I reckon you never know when you might need to ride.”  
Hanzo scoffed. “You cannot be serious. It is not as if one simply sees horses standing aground anymore.”  
“We did earlier, didn’t we?” he asked.  
Hanzo gave him a flat look.

Then _McCree_ was the one who made an ungainly, embarrassing snort of laughter.  
“All right, all right. That’s only _part_ of the reason. The other is just ‘cause I like ‘em. Anyway, what about _you_?” he looked Hanzo up and down. “Why do _you_ dress like _that_?”  
“I am an _archer_ ,” Hanzo said, puffing up slightly. He toed a little of the sand aside, decided it would be an improvement to walking on the seething-hot road, and began walking again. Follow the road, the American had said.

He continued, “This is a kyudo-gi. It is the most appropriate thing to wear as an archer; anything else would only get in my way. I must have freedom of movement to draw my bow.”  
“Oh, is _that_ what that is,” McCree said. A slow smile spread across his face. “So’s there some fancy archery rule says you haveta run around with your shirt half-off?”  
Hanzo rolled his eyes. “Not that one such as yourself would understand, but yes, there is.”

McCree’s sly smile was full-blown by then, and Hanzo finally asked, in anxious (and slightly annoyed) exasperation, “Why are you making that _face_?”  
McCree shook his head. “Aw, nothin’, I’m just picturin’ a shootin’ range fulla buff guys with their shirts barely on.”  
Hanzo blinked and stared. Was this a hint? Was he supposed to say something? 

Before he could make up his mind, McCree glanced at him and continued, “And I’ll level with ya, I figured the reason you never put your sleeve on was ‘cause you got that tattoo. Beautiful piece, by the way, if you don’t mind my sayin’.”  
Hanzo glanced at his chest and arm, covered now by his sleeve, and felt a flush of pleasure at the compliment. 

A second later the import of the American’s other words struck him--  
“Did you _really_ think I was vain enough to go into battle dressed ‘impractically’ because I would look ‘cool’?”

McCree chuckled a little. “Well, fella like you, tough as nails, doesn’t have too much to be scared of. Plus I’ve known guys not half as skilled or dangerous as you who wear less to show off ink they got.”  
Hanzo fell silent at that, digesting McCree’s words.

The way the American structured his sentences always took him a minute to understand; he was fluent in the language and knew it, but between the cultural divide and McCree’s choice of unusual idioms--many of which made no sense at all on their face--half the time he felt like he was missing some important layer of meaning to the other man’s words. 

Hanzo was still trying to think of something sufficiently casual to say to get McCree talking again when the other man tapped him in the stomach with the back of one hand.  
Americans’ reputation for being handsy was well-warranted, but he found most of them meant well, McCree especially.

He also probably shouldn’t enjoy the other man’s casual bumps and brushes so much, he reflected, especially since the other man had let slip no hint that he was even remotely interested in Hanzo as a romantic partner.   
“What,” Hanzo said, his voice flat. 

“Look,” McCree said. He pointed ahead, into the heat-shimmering distance down the road, where if Hanzo squinted as hard as he could, he could vaguely make out a sign.  
“Looks like we found ourselves some civilization!” McCree said. “D’you think they got any vacancies?” He asked, with a smirk.  
“What do you mean? Of _course_ they have vacant rooms! We are in the middle of nowhere!” Hanzo said, peevishly.

McCree laughed, biting his lips to calm himself down after a moment. “That was a joke, pardner, lighten up. Don’t worry, soon we’ll have shelter, air conditionin’, and--” McCree squinted in the direction of the sign again, “Satellite TV! The works!”

~

‘The works’ proved to be nothing but a mirage.  
As they drew closer and the road leveled off, they could see the heat-waves had distorted the sign--it was very old and rusted-out, several of the lights apparently being broken.  
Finally when the only things left between themselves and the place was a large, vacant lot, they could see the motel itself was actually abandoned.  
McCree stopped a moment, his face unreadable.  
Hanzo stared at McCree.

Eventually McCree pursed his lips and sighed, shrugging. “Well, you win some, you lose some,” he said. He kept walking towards the motel.  
“No!” Hanzo said. “Why bother going any farther? If I call Winston now, the drop-carrier can be here in a few hours!”  
“Winston can’t send the carrier, it’d compromise our mission. Plus, how’s he gonna fly an unregistered aircraft emblazoned with the logo of an outlawed organization through American airspace, at a time like this?”  
“He has done it before,” Hanzo said.

“Yeah, for missions that only required we’d be here an’ then gone an hour later. Trust me, you do _not_ want the American military on your ass. Unlike Overwatch, they ain’t too fond of listenin’ before they shoot.”  
Hanzo growled in annoyance, clenching his fists. 

McCree was right, though. There was nothing else to be done. Finally, swallowing his pride and indignation, he followed the American towards the vacant lot.  
McCree was holding aside a section of chainlink fence as one would hold a curtain aside, and he gestured with a dip of his head for Hanzo to pass through.  
“After you, pardner. Seein’ as how you _are_ the guest an’ all,” he said. “Oh, mind your step--”  
“Yes, I can see, the ground is sunken in,” Hanzo said.

He took one step into the lot and almost broke his ankle when the sandy ground underfoot abruptly shifted. He stumbled--McCree caught him--and then stood therewith his face blazing in embarrassment as the other man helped right him.  
“You all right?”  
“...I am fine,” Hanzo said.

“Well, that’s good. But, uh. Whoops,” McCree said. “Looks like we got a problem.”  
“Like what?” Hanzo snapped. His right ankle was sore now, and he was hoping it wouldn’t worsen just by walking across the lot--which he could now see on closer inspection was full of such pit-holes, the ground wavy and broken-up and uneven.   
“Well,” McCree scratched his chin a little, “These here holes were most likely made by gophers or rabbits, but we don’t know if the original residents are still there. Could be rattlesnake heaven, far as we know.”

Hanzo stiffened where he stood, staring at McCree in horror. “ _WHAT_? Then why did you want to come this way?”  
“It was faster than walkin’ on the side of the road anymore, and you were sayin’ your fancy boots were botherin’ your feet.”  
“I said no such thing!”  
“Yes you did! ‘This cracked pavement is probably going to ruin my boots’,” McCree said.  
While they stood there arguing, something rustled in the bushes near them.  
Both of them froze, Hanzo’s head whipping around.  
“D’you see that,” McCree mumbled.  
“Of course I do,” Hanzo said.

They both stared long and hard at the burrow, at the entrance where a rabbit was crouching. It was shaded by a draggled, gnawn-looking bush; after a long, silent moment, the rabbit shifted slightly before disappearing back into the burrow.  
“Well, that’s good news,” McCree said.  
“How is it good news that this field is infested with vermin whose holes almost broke my leg?” Hanzo asked.  
“’Cause if the original residents are still here, there ain’t any snakes to worry about; they don’t usually nest in the same places. Now come on, let’s get out of this heat!”

 

The motel was a pale sandstone pink with two storeys of windows with white curtains overlooking the parking lot. The only thing in the parking lot, they found, was a rusted-out orange dumpster, which was empty and had been for so long that it smelled only faintly of garbage.

They could see the building was shaped like a horseshoe, with an interior courtyard facing the parking lot. It was blocked from their sight by a high iron fence with metal mesh behind it. 

The motel’s front door was locked and chained shut--something McCree remedied expediently by going around the side and finding a large window already broken out.  
“I suppose you want me to go in _there_ first, as well?” Hanzo asked. But now he was more amused than anything else, and McCree looked between him and the window.  
“Now, would I ask a gentlemanly fella like you to crawl in through a window like a common outlaw?”  
“You asked this ‘gentlemanly fellow’ to walk through a field full of holes already,” Hanzo pointed out. “Completely disregarding his ‘fancy boots’.”

McCree chuckled a little. “Yeah, I guess that’s true. But don’t worry, let me in first and you cover me, in case we’re steppin’ into someone’s livin’ room uninvited.”  
But the motel really _was_ abandoned; the entire office was littered with broken glass, the front desk and the line of chairs against the wall covered with a thin scrim of tawny-pale dust. The cushions of the reception room chairs had burst, old brown twill disgorging yellowish foam that looked like small things had gotten their teeth into it already.   
“This is not promising,” Hanzo said.

“Oh, just shake the dirt off an’ I’m sure they’d be perfectly comf’terble,” McCree said.   
Everything he said sounded like it was supposed to be a joke lately, like it was some secret between the two of them.   
It made Hanzo feel tense and excited without understanding why.

He felt overheated and still slightly embarrassed about nearly falling flat on his ass earlier, his skin tight and uncomfortable. 

He paused and glanced around before adjusting one of his boots, but McCree saw him anyway, discreet as he’d tried to be.  
“Sorry ‘bout your ankle,” McCree mumbled, sheepishly. “Wish we had some ice for it or somethin’.”

“It will be fine. I just need to rest it for awhile,” Hanzo said. Then, feeling bold, he said, “Had I known the amenities would be so spartan, I would have brought my own.”  
“Oh yeah? Like what?”  
“Oh, not much. A mattress, maybe. And clean bedding and a and pillow.”  
McCree laughed. “I reckon when they cleared out of here, they probably didn’t take the beds’n’such with ‘em.”  
Hanzo made a face, wrinkling his nose in disgust. “If the state of those chairs is any indication of the state of the beds, I would rather sleep on the floor.”

McCree finished with the lock; the door swung open, admitting them into a narrow, dim corridor that opened at its far end into the courtyard, which they could now see was actually dominated by a large rectangular pool.  
\--What had once been a pool. Now it was empty of water, the deep end full of sand. A few little low tufts of scrub and grasses grew in the deposited sand there. 

All the motel rooms’ small balconies overlooked the center courtyard with its ruined pool; the balconies were also the access way to the rooms, one long balcony wrapping around each storey. To the west the vacant lot stretched out the entire length of the motel to wrap around one side, the ground torn-up and uneven all the way down to the motel’s parking lot.  
They checked the entire area and found no one, nor any signs of life other than empty soda cans and bottles, most of which had expiration dates from a decade ago. 

“Looks like it’s clear,” McCree said. He holstered his gun; Hanzo slipped his arrow back into his quiver and slung Storm Bow over his shoulder.   
“Which room d’you want?”  
“The room with the most optimal view of the parking lot and the entire structure is on the eastern side, at the end.”   
‘Conveniently close to the stairs, with a clean sight-line all the way to the parking lot and the road beyond,’ went without saying.

McCree nodded in agreement. They went to the rooms in question, McCree worked his magic with the locks, and they stepped inside, musty undisturbed air fanning back over them like curtains.   
Hanzo took the room closest to the stairs, McCree the one immediately next to it.   
The trip was proving to be more and more of a disappointment, however, as he’d only managed to embarrass himself a bunch of times and never actually _talk_ to the other man beyond inane banter. He was beginning to hope Genji didn’t have plans to send him on such outings wiht every member of the team; he already knew he had nothing of any interest to say to any of them, and was already aware that there were others he would not get along with at all. 

He was wondering about McCree, then--

Who suddenly appeared in the doorway, looking pleased with something.  
“Knock knock,” he said.  
Hanzo made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “Why do you do this? The door is already open.”

“Politeness, amigo. Anyhow, listen--I got some good news, and some bad news.”  
“What’s the good news?” Hanzo asked. He decided to ignore the unfamiliar word for now--there were more pressing issues than McCree’s speech idiosyncrasies.  
“There’s a courtesy charge station just a stone’s throw that way,” he said, pointing westward. “I reckon we could walk there tomorrow morning.”  
But Hanzo was already on his feet, his bag on his shoulder. “Tomorrow morning? Why should we wait?”

“Well, y’know those predators you were talkin’ about? Buzzards an’ whatnot? Well, we ain’t got to worry about them. But you don’t wanna go walkin’ around here in the middle of the night, unless you wanna run across a bunch of coyotes or accidentally put your foot down on the business end of a scorpion or rattlesnake.”  
Hanzo only gave this a moment’ sthought. “It is still daylight. We can make it if we move quickly.”

“Yeah, but we ain’t gonna make it _back_ quick,” McCree pointed out. “An’ I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to risk gettin’ caught at a station in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, in this neck of the woods.”  
 _That_ made Hanzo pause.  
He thought about the poster with Jesse’s face on it, the bounty. That long, long tail of zeroes behind the numbers. 

For a moment he was completely shocked--and a little awed--at the American’s apparent lack of fear; the nonchalance also had none of the characater of swaggering, pretended bravado, either.

Hanzo figured McCree was either much craftier than he had expected, or he was much more careless than he had initially guessed.

He slung his bag back down on the bed and sat, perhaps more forcefully than he needed to. Some of the ancient mattress’s fibers gave way beneath his rear end and he made another disgusted face.  
“Perhaps we should stay here, then,” he said. “But why would this place be any safer than the charge station?”  
McCree shrugged. “Maybe it ain’t. But at least this won’t be the _first_ place they search.”

They’d both packed emerency rations, and in lieu of having literally anything else to do--the satellite TV, of course, being a joke, because the television sets were all archaic CRT monitors and the place had no power besides--they sat together on the balcony and ate dinner in companionable quiet while the sun went down.  
“Looks like a postcard, doesn’t it?” McCree said.   
“What?” Hanzo said, looking over at him.

McCree tilted his chin in the direction of the low hills in the distance, the sky washed with gold towards the west where the sun was sinking behind the black hills in an orange-red blaze.  
He followed the other man’s eyes, watching what he looked at for a long moment before lookng back at him.

McCree had taken off his hat and set it beside himself, so his hair was loose, tousled dark brown strands pushed back from his face. Hanzo watched his profile against the fading gold and blue light of the sky, darkened by the light behind him.

Aloud he said, “It is a stunning view, yes. The landscape is very...wild. Very rugged.”  
They were both silent for awhile.   
Dinner was more of the rations--steak bowls again.  
McCree grinned when he pulled the lid off his. “Good bread, good meat, good lord, let’s eat!” he said.  
Hanzo blinked down at his bowl, before murmuring, “Itadakimasu.”  
“Do y’all ever get tired of doin’ everything so efficiently? Hell, you got one word to say grace an’ most of us got to string together seven or eight good sentences, bowin’ an’ scrapin’ the entire way, ‘til by the time you’re finished with grace you’re near ‘bout to expire from hunger an’ all your guests have plain withered away.”  
Hanzo snorted a laugh. “We do not quote scripture at our food, no,” he said. “Nor do we recite humorous rhymes to our meals. It is…an interesting custom.”  
McCree, who had shoveled a spoonful of rice into his mouth, made an ungainly honk of laughter.   
They ate together in pleasant, companionable quiet.

**Author's Note:**

> ...why does everyone think _Hanzo_ would be the suave one? He has no social skills beyond "Bossing People Around" and "knowing how to buy expensive suits so he looks hot and also imposing while bossing people around". McCree is laid-back and sweet and would un-ironically bring you a bouquet on your first date because that's the Gentlemanly thing to do. Come on, you all. 
> 
> (As always, I hope you enjoyed reading!)  
> (And no, I still don't have a beta-reader)


End file.
